IN THIS ISSUE No.109 - 22.05.2002 Clifford Chance give green light to GPMS project - MoFo launches Chinese site - NetNames extends domain services - Tenancy agreements online - ITNet becomes Citrix partner - Australian legal tech awards - New Baker Robbins partnership - Butterworths XML deal - Next issue: 12.06.2002

CLIFFORD CHANCE FINALLY GIVE GREEN LIGHT TO GPMS PROJECT
Reports that the contracts would be signed "within the next few weeks" have been doing the rounds for the last couple of years but Clifford Chance, one of the world's largest law firms, has finally given the green light to its GPMS Global Practice Management System project with management and IT consultancy Cap Gemini Ernst & Young selected as the prime contractor for the multi-million pound project.

GPMS will provide Clifford Chance with one integrated global system for time recording, billing, accounting, financial analysis and reporting across all of their 28 offices in 19 countries. The system has been designed with the key objective of enhancing quality of service to clients and improving global client relationship management. The GPMS system will start to go live in Europe from early 2003 and the global programme will be completed by Clifford Chance during 2004.

Chris Merry, Clifford Chance's world firm finance director, said: "GPMS will provide a core system with the flexibility to grow with the global business and integrate with other key systems. It will improve efficiency by reducing the duplication of effort and provide partners and clients with the information they require more rapidly and cost effectively. The new practice management system will mean that our lawyers and support staff can be more productive. Overall we expect this investment to reduce costs and improve practice profitability." He added that Cap Gemini Ernst & Young was selected as prime contractor because of its global capabilities, its proven record in delivering complex systems integration projects on time and within budget, and following its successful completion of other consulting projects at Clifford Chance.

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young has already worked on an initial design phase as an essential preliminary to the implementation contract. As prime contractor (the contract was signed with the UK company Cap Gemini Ernst & Young UK plc but fulfillment of the contract will take place using the group's global resources) the company will be working with a number of sub-contractors including legal software specialists Keystone, technology vendor Oracle and hardware suppliers Hewlett-Packard. GPMS is the first time that a combination of the two IT systems - Oracle and Keystone - have been integrated together to provide an end to end solution. Oracle supplies the financial software and database applications; Keystone, the law firm functionality including time, billing and client management applications.

With Keystone now part of the Solution 6 Group, Solution 6 Europe managing director David England added "Winning this calibre client confirms the quality and suitability of Keystone's software for very large, global professional services firms. The sale also represents the first major success for Keystone since joining Solution 6, following our recent acquisition of Keystone Solutions Group PLC and the merging of its people, products and operations into the wider Solution 6 group."

MO FO LAUNCHES CHINESE WEB SITE
Morrison & Foerster (MoFo) has launched its first Chinese-language web site. The site, which can be found at www.mofo.com.cn and www.mofo.com.hk is one of the first active sites in Simplified Chinese ever launched by a US law firm. The new site will bring a range of relevant content in Chinese and features news about international legal developments across a broad range of industries. The site is intended to provide convenient access to valuable information for Chinese companies that are active internationally, as well as non-Chinese companies whose Chinese-speaking employees need ready access to information in their own language.

NETNAMES EXTENDS DOMAIN MANAGEMENT SERVICES
The UK domain management specialist NetNames this week launched a series of enhancements to its services at the annual INTA (International Trademark Association) meeting in Washington DC. The enhancements to the company's Portfolio Manager, Brand Audit and Name Alert services are intended to enhance usability, broaden coverage and provide greater management control.

Portfolio Manager is an online desk-top solution for corporates and IP professionals to effectively manage their domain name portfolios. Improved data population now provides even more registration and technical information on each domain name, with added coverage of ccTLDs (country code Top Level Domains eg .fr and .jp). Brand Audit uses NetNames' proprietary searching capability to query its unique database of WHOIS information from multiple Registrars to identify domains by registrant or keyword, thus identifying the domain names a company has, or should have. The latest enhancements have now broadened data coverage to take in all ccTLDs. Name Alert proactively monitors the internet for new registrations and provides weekly notifications of potential infringements to a company's online intellectual property; again this coverage has been extended to take in all ccTLDs.

Or as a spokesman for the company put it "NetNames Domain Management Services now offer 100 percent coverage of all active country code domain names, so whether someone registers your brand as a domain name in Albania or Zimbabwe, you'll know about it, and be able to decide on the most appropriate course of action." www.netnames.co.uk

On a lighter note with the FIFA World Cup fast approaching, NetNames report that David Beckham is the most popular England soccer player on the web - 68 domain names contain his name. Michael Owen features in 15, whilst the least popular player is Martin Keown with only 2 domain names.

TENANCY AGREEMENTS ONLINE
We have been contacted by Martin Sewell of Tenancy Agreements who are in the process of setting up a new web site that allows landlords to purchase tenancy agreements online. Sewell is wishing to purchase templates for as many types of tenancy agreement as possible.

Says Sewell "The questions answered on the web should ensure that the agreement is sufficiently tailor made so as to satisfy the customer's requirements. The site is set up so that the agreement is dynamically generated on the fly, thus enabling the customer to download the document immediately after a credit card payment. Ergo, there will be no cost or time involved to either yourselves or Tenancy Agreements for each sale of an agreement.

"One possibility is that we could pay either a retainer or a fixed sum per contract, and sell them on the basis that the agreements will be up to date and legally sound, as they have been prepared and/or validated by a solicitor. Looking at the online competition, we'd like to sell them for about £30.00."www.tenancy-agreements.co.uk For more details contact Sewell at martin@tenancy-agreements.co.uk

ITNET BECOMES CITRIX PARTNER
ITNet, the UK technology outsourcing specialist best known for its work with the English Law Society, has become a Citrix gold solutions provider. ITNet will now sell and support Citrix application server computing and access portal solutions to customers in the UK market.

LEGAL TECHNOLOGY AWARDS - AUSTRALIAN STYLE
CCH, Fuji Xerox, Leo Cussen Institute and all Law Societies around Australia are giving Australian legal practitioners and associated organisations the opportunity to show the world how effective they are in creating and implementing legal technology solutions. The aim is to increase the professional's understanding of the benefits to be gained from implementing new technologies. Go to www.cch.com.au/techawards2002.htm to get your entry form or view previous years' winners and runners-up.

BAKER ROBBINS BECOMES NEXTPAGE PARTNER
The legal IT consultancy Baker Robbins has added NextPage technology to the range of products it supports. NextPage supply a range of web based "cross-enterprise content applications" that "allow lawyers, clients and other professionals to share knowledge and expertise across organisational boundaries." In otherwords it is yet another knowledge management portal. Commenting on the deal, Baker Robbins chairman David Baker said "Our partnership with NextPage will help Baker Robbins deliver powerful solutions that improve efficiency for law firms and corporations. By adding expertise in NextPage products to our service offerings, we are giving our clients a greater choice in the selection of technologies, and allowing us to better tailor solutions to their strategic business objectives." www.nextpage.com

BUTTERWORTHS SELECT XML PUBLISHING SYSTEM
UK legal publisher LexisNexis Butterworths Tolley has selected the XyEnterprise Content system, from Xyvision Enterprise Solutions Inc, to provide the basis for a new XML publishing operation. The system will manage reusable Word and XML content and enhance publishing workflow - XyEnterprise products are already used within other parts of LexisNexis group. The system will use Word and XML editing tools for content creation, Content for XML and document management, and Content workflow for enhanced data flow efficiency. www.xyenterprise.com